Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates to an image processing apparatus, an image processing method, and a storage medium, which can perform drawing-object combination processing.
Description of the Related Art
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2009-87266 discusses a technique relating to combining objects. This technique sequentially acquires successive objects included in print data, combines these objects into fewer objects, and performs subsequent processing on each of the fewer objects resulting from this combination. Examples of the subsequent processing include processing of generating a display list (DL) for each object. The cost of such DL generation processing is lower in generating a DL for each of the fewer objects resulting from the combination, than the cost in generating a DL for each of the objects to be combined.
According to Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2009-87266 described above, processing for combination of objects (e.g., processing of determining whether an object is combinable, and combination processing itself) is performed for each object. However, depending on tendencies of successive multiple objects, the number of objects may not be effectively reduced even if the processing for combination is performed.
For example, there is a case where a first object itself is determined to be a combinable object, a second object is determined to be an object combinable with the first object, and a third object is determined to be an object not combinable with the first and second objects. In this case, performing combination results in two objects, which are an object obtained by combining the first and second objects, and the third object not combined.
The three objects are combined into the two objects, and if the subsequent processing is the DL generation processing, the cost of the DL generation processing is reduced indeed. However, as a matter of course, processing performed for combining the tree objects (i.e., the processing of determining whether an object is combinable, and the combination processing, which are described above) also requires the cost. Therefore, if the processing cost of the combination processing exceeds a reduction in the processing cost of the generation processing, the overall processing cost of generating the DLs based on the drawing objects increases. In other words, the overall processing efficiency decreases, if overhead of the processing for combining the objects is too high.